Reproduction is prohibited, but not impossible.



Another wonderful moment from this creepily narrated but brilliant video:

"There are three types of virgins:
A. Virgins by choice
B. Virgins by way of poor social skills
C. People who should be in Group B, but claim otherwise for reasons of prestige"

Anyhoo, watch it NAO!

In case you haven't already seen this, oh, I dunno, EVERYWHERE?

It was elbow-to-elbow after hours last night at Nanette Lepore in Chevy Chase, where they held a party for the opening of the new boutique. Yes, I was there! And newsflash, so was Nanette herself, glowing amid the pink recessed lighting of the shop. (Everyone looked so rosy.)

Champagne, teeny noshes, three-piece band popping out Euro jazz, but unfortch, most of the clothes were moved away to make room for party space. Sad! However, I ogled the off-the-rack goodies around the edges, including a single soft-tastic purple coat, size 0 and $525. Le sigh. (Avail in blue at Bloomie's. And Stella McCartney also has a great fuzzy purple coat this season.)

Goodie bag: Nanette Lepore perfume, logo umbrella and a copy of Capitol File. I gave the mag to my boyfriend. He reads it for the pictures.

K Street Kate (who I haven't met, btw) has piccies.

Store:
5449 Wisconsin Ave.
Chevy Chase, MD (just across the DC line opposite from Mazza Gallerie)

Here's my um-brella-ella-ella-ella:

Newsflash: It seems that Barack Hussein Obama has gay parents! Oh em gee.



Courtesy of failblog.org

1. It's possible to be both full and hungry at the same time.

2. It's perfectly acceptable to eat a hot dog at 10 a.m. when you've already been up for half a day.

3. Likewise, it's OK to eat half a pound of pasta and go to sleep at 9 p.m.

4. Sometimes, despite all that hot dog and pasting eating, Spandex is actually a good choice of attire.

5. If someone tells you you're "looking strong" ... you're not.*


* A fact I'd long suspected, but no one's actually told me that lately. Rah! I must be getting better.

Escape
Carolyn Jessop, 2007

During this spring's raid on the ranch, former polygamist wife Carolyn Jessop made the rounds of news shows, talking about a life of squabbling with sister-wives, constant pregnancy and arbitrary rules. I decided to check out her book because I'm incredibly nosy.

Even though she got out (I mean, consider the title if nothing else), I found myself incredibly disturbed and depressed by this book. Everything in their lives was such a mind-trick. Jessop believed it all because it's what she grew up with, but life got more and more extreme on the compound until schools were closed and women were on virtual lockdown with expired car registrations and empty gas tanks.

Jessop finally escaped the Yearning for Zion with all eight of her children, then won legal custody of them in the first court battle of its kind. The brainwashing runs deep, though -- her oldest daughter was never comfortable with life "on the outside" and returned to live on the compound on her 18th birthday.

Purchase on Amazon here.

So, I do triathlons. This is my second year. I'm slow, but I'm mighty. However, the picture in this post is NOT of me. I do not look good or happy while doing a race, no matter how excited I actually might be on the inside.

But this weekend's race presented way more challenges than swimming 1K, biking 40K and running 10K.

Yes, kiddies, despite the fact that the Nation's Triathlon was in the city where I've lived for 10 years, I got lost on the way there -- got lost to the point that I had to go into Virginia and back again to get on the right track. I got literally the LAST parking space in the athletes' lot by staring someone down.

I know, my Pontiac Vibe is just that threatening.

Then I got to carry my stuff like a mile and a half around the Tidal Basin. Good God, where is a sherpa when you need one?! I was so late that I heard them doing the National Anthem when I was still quite a bit off, getting sweaty from the intense humidity that had already started at 7 a.m.

I knew there was a very, very good chance they wouldn't let me into the race since I was so late.

When I arrived, the main athlete entrance was closed. I knew it had closed at 6:45 a.m., so I knew I'd have to beg. Officials assured me there was another entrance that was still letting people in ... but I couldn't find it.

So I literally hopped the fence to get into the race area. (Threw my huge pile of gear/crap over first.) Fortunately, bike racking had been the day before. Set up my area as fast as I could -- helped that for some weird reason, I had an ENTIRE RACK to myself so I completely spread out.

Luckily, I was in a later swim wave -- we didn't go out until around 7:50. Got in the water, silver caps not pink this time, FINALLY (women 25-29 ALWAYS seem to get stuck with white or pink, ugh).

So I was legally in the race, despite having to basically SNEAK in in the first place. But the weirdness was not over.

The bike stickers were not sticky enough and there were stickers on the ground EVERYWHERE. Before I'd seen one, all I knew was that I ran over something big and white with my bike and had to stop because the intense hissing noise made me think I had a flat.

Me: [Censored]

I'd never had a flat on a race before. So I ripped open my repair kit, got out ALL my equipment, flipped the bike upside down ... and the front tire was still firm. And the back tire was, too. WTF? Then I realized someone's bike sticker was lodged between my brake and my tire, which was what was making the hissing noise! I was so sure is was a flat that I'd gotten all my gear out ASAP to do it quick. Oh well, at least it wasn't a flat. I repacked my gear and got going.

Around the Maryland state line, we came on a huge dead German Shepherd dog that clearly had been there for QUITE awhile. I was bothered by that because that was someone's pet ... but I was also annoyed that race officials had put so little effort into sweeping the course, for, oh, I don't know, 80-pound dead dogs lying in the road for the past week?

About five minutes after that, I RAN OVER A SQUIRREL WITH MY BIKE.

I repeat: I RAN OVER A SQUIRREL WITH MY BIKE.

The day just kept getting weirder and weirder. The little scamp ran out in between my wheels -- there was no was to avoid him on such short notice. Bump-ba-bump.

Me: NO! [beeep]! OH GOD!

But I looked over my shoulder and he was running away without a limp so I guess I just got his tail.

The guy behind me complimented me on not crashing.

Final, though less surreal moment, was between the bike and the run, asking a girl for a squirt of her sunscreen. She gave me, literally, an ice cream scoop size of sunscreen and then I ended up dropping most of it INTO my sneaker, though I put it on anyway, because seriously, that's just how the day went.

Fabulousosity from Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in the 'SNL' season premiere.

Ani DiFranco wrote a poem shortly after 9/11 that she later set to music and published on her album "So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter."

Fan-produced vid here:



and once upon a time
we were moonshine
rushing down the throat of a giraffe
yes, rushing down the long hallway
despite what the p.a. announcement says
yes, rushing down the long stairs
with the whiskey of eternity
fermented and distilled
to eighteen minutes
burning down our throats
down the hall
down the stairs
in a building so tall
that it will always be there

More lyrics here.

Slate's got an interesting article up about measuring the effects of the under-30 vote:

...On Election Day 2004, kids turned out in record numbers: About 4.6 million ! more people under the age of 29 voted in 2004 than in 2000. Yet 18- to 29-year-olds accounted for only 17 percent of voters—roughly the same as in 2000—because the geezer vote also grew. As a result, youth mobilization was declared a myth, perhaps unjustifiably. "We rocked the vote all right," Hunter S. Thompson said at the time. "Those little bastards betrayed us again."

Read the rest...

"The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade"
Ann Fessler, 2006

This compilation of personal histories brings forward birth mothers of the 1950s and 1960s -- in other words, victims of the "unwed mother" homes of the time. This isn't something you'd want to stretch out by the pool to read. Each story is achingly sad; most women didn't want to give their babies up but were forced to by an army of doctors, nurses, social workers and angry parents. For many, the pain of that loss has never gone away.

Fessler herself was adopted. When the book opens, she's known her birth mother's name and location for years but has been afraid to go, instead opting to interview dozens of other birthmothers. Finally, near the end of her project, she seeks out her own birthmother, who got pregnant by one boy and engaged to another. Her fiancé offered to help raise the baby, but she felt it wouldn't be fair to him. After hearing so many legacies of loss, Fessler must have seen this as a stinging rejection by her birthmother.

I do wish Fessler have done more research and presented more of a factual history in addition to these women's personal stories. However, she is a photographer first and foremost, and I think it shows in the construction of the book. That's all right. This book has a place, especially because decades later and in a society where this sort of thing would never happen anymore, people still don't talk much about that time, the time before.

Purchase on Amazon here.

Sarah Haskins of current.tv never fails to amuse.

The District Sample Sale opens its doors on Tuesday, Sept. 9 and I am rarin' to go! General admission tix are $40; VIP tix get you in an hour earlier, at $250. I'm getting in for free thanks to my jobby-job.

In case you've never been to a sample sale, a bunch of local boutiques offer up their unsold, end-of-season merch for deeply discounted prices. In the past, sample sales used to be limited to actual "samples" -- the size 0s and 2s that usually end up on the mannquins -- but these days things are fortunately a bit more democratic.

DC Shops participating in 2008:
Caramel
Daisy Too
Green & Blue
Ginger
Harriet Kassman
Hysteria
Lettie Gooch
The Little Shoebox
Periwinkle
Proper Topper
Sangaree
Simply Soles
Sugar
Sherman Pickey
Terra
Urban Chic
We One You Too
Wink

Want tix to this twice-a-year event? (Uh, YEAH, who wouldn't?)

Visit www.districtsamplesale.com.
General admission: $40
VIP admission: $250 (early entrance + sweet goodie bag)

So Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter Bristol (after Track and Trig, I do think Gov. Palin deserves a nomination to Baby’s Named a Bad, Bad Thing) is joining the Jamie Lynn Spears Club. They do grow up so fast these days.

I wonder if Bristol received abstinence-only education. But I don’t think we should criticize her. Millions, of teens have sex every year. Whether she didn’t know enough to protect herself or her method of birth control failed, she was one of the unlucky ones who got stuck. If Bristol had quietly sought an abortion, we’d never know about it, but that’s her choice and I’m not criticizing her for it.

What I am criticizing is 1., the anti-education stance that some people somehow think is helping today’s kids, and 2., the fact that John McCain knew about Bristol’s pregnancy ahead of time and still chose Gov. Palin. That seems very strange to me -- that even if he was personally OK with it, wouldn't he stop to think that, oh, I don't know, it just may hurt his campaign?

I look forward to seeing how this story develops...